Clavering Primary School

Many thanks to Cllr Paul Beck, the Ceremonial Mayor of Hartlepool, who invited us to a special PESSPA Celebration to commemorate our ongoing outstanding commitment to and achievements in PE, School Sport and Physical Activity.

Many thanks to Mr Iain Wright MP who joined us during our special 'Double Gold Mark Assembly' the first time that we were awarded the GOLD standard of the Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark and the GOLD standard of the School Games Mark.

We are very proud that, in the summer term of the 2013-2014 academic year, Clavering Primary School was the first school in Hartlepool to be awarded the GOLD standard of the School Games Mark and that our GOLD status has continued to be reaccredited every year. GOLD status recognises Clavering as being amongst the very best in the country for our PE and competitive sport provision.

The School Games Mark was created by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and is implemented and developed by the Youth Sport Trust and Sport England. The Mark rewards schools for their commitment to and the development of competition, school sport and physical education. To achieve GOLD acknowledged Clavering as being a 'beacon of sporting excellence'.

In the summer term of the 2017-2018 academic year, we received confirmation that we had achieved the SCHOOL GAMES PLATINUM AWARD which is an extension to the School Games Mark which rewards schools who have maintained consistently highs standards with their school sport provision. As part of the extended application, the candidates eligible for the PLATINUM AWARD – who had already achieved FIVE successive GOLD AWARDS across five years of outstanding work – were asked to submit a detailed case study. Our case study was about our nationally-recognised physical activity strategy which has already been shared as part of our work as a Youth Sport Trust Lead School for Health and Wellbeing; at a number of regional PESSPA conferences and at the National School Games Organisers' Summit. Our work to promote physical activity and ensure that every child is physically active for at least thirty minutes during every school day has now been written up as a case study of outstanding practice by the School Games network and Youth Sport Trust.

Achieving the highest level of the School Games Mark is testimony to the tremendous work that goes on at Clavering in PE lessons, in school sport (both intra- and inter-school) and in our many extra-curricular clubs and activities. We are fortunate to have staff members and families who understand and appreciate the benefits of the Clavering PESSPA Programme in terms of both sporting achievement and also the successful ethos of the school as a whole. In addition, we are blessed with amazing children right across the school who have a tremendous appetite for what we offer in our PE curriculum and our wider physical activity and school sport opportunities.

We are very proud to have achieved and renewed the GOLD standard of the Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark. We use the Quality Mark as a self-review tool to assess and review the outcomes of the Clavering PESSPA Programme.

The Youth Sport Trust Quality Mark allows us to evaluate our provision and outcomes in physical education, school sport and physical activity against national standards.

Our current outcomes are:

• High quality Physical Education (PE): GOLD
• High quality school sport and physical activity: GOLD
• Using high quality school sport and PE as a catalyst for learning: GOLD

We are fortunate that the whole Clavering Family supports our vision for PE, school sport and physical activity and one of the areas that our Youth Sport Trust assessments has always been most impressed with is how the Clavering PESSPA Programme is focused on every Clavering child, not just our elite sports superstars.

GIRLS ACTIVE

As a school, we have specifically looked at our girls’ participation in and enjoyment of PE, school sport and physical activity and we were honoured to be one of the first primary schools that pioneered the Girls Active approach being used in primary schools, achieving Girls Active status from the Youth Sport Trust in 2014.

Girls Active offers a simple flexible action planning framework to help teachers and girls work together to address their individual needs. The main objective of Girls Active is to help teachers and (normally) secondary school girls understand what motivates them to take part in PE, sport and physical activity; developing an action plan based on their feedback on how it should be delivered. In addition, some of the girls become role models within their school, setting up leadership groups which focus on how they could make PE and physical activity more appealing to their peers.

At Clavering, our girls are as equally involved and successful in PE and sport as our boys. 100% of our girls participate in at least two hours of PE, the vast majority of our girls participate in extra-curricular sport, 100% of our girls participate in intra-school sport, the vast majority of our girls participate in inter-school sport (in mixed and/or girls-only competitions), the vast majority of our girls participate in our progressively challenging Key Stage 2 residentials, and we have a team of Girls Active Leaders who make a fantastic contribution to the involvement of girls in PESSPA activities across the school.

Although we are delighted by the success and engagement of our girls in PE, school sport and physical activity, we are painfully aware of the national statistics surrounding teenage girls.

We are using our Girls Active status to (at an age appropriate level):

• tackle the negative attitude that girls too often have about their body image;
• improve their attitude to PE and sport; and
• help make PE and sport more relevant to our girls’ lives.

We have many positive role models – both pupils and staff members – within school and we have followed advice from leading research about how to encourage girls to be more active and enjoy PE and school sport:

• having a genuine choice of activities;
• having girls-only sessions;
• including more friendly competitions and fun;
• ensuring teachers are positive and encouraging;
• changing boys’ attitudes to girls in sport; and
• increasing girls’ confidence.

We are very proud of the success of our girls – at all ability levels – in PE and school sport and we hope that they will continue to lead healthy, active and successful lives when they leave us, bucking the trend identified by all research in this area.